A variety of movements of feministideology have developed over the years. They vary in goals, strategies, and affiliations. They often overlap, and some feminists identify themselves with several branches of feminist thought.

Liberal feminism asserts the equality of men and women through political and legal reform. It is an individualistic form of feminism, which focuses on women's ability to show and maintain their equality through their own actions and choices. Liberal feminism uses the personal interactions between men and women as the place from which to transform society. According to liberal feminists, all women are capable of asserting their ability to achieve equality, therefore it is possible for change to happen without altering the structure of society. Issues important to liberal feminists include reproductive and abortion rights, sexual harassment, voting, education, "equal pay for equal work", affordable childcare, affordable health care, and bringing to light the frequency of sexual and domestic violence against women.[1]

Anarcha-feminism (also called anarchist feminism and anarcho-feminism) combines anarchism with feminism. It generally views patriarchy as a manifestation of involuntary hierarchy. Anarcha-feminists believe that the struggle against patriarchy is an essential part of class struggle and of the anarchist struggle against the state.[2] In essence, the philosophy sees anarchist struggle as a necessary component of feminist struggle and vice versa. As L. Susan Brown puts it, "as anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all relationships of power, it is inherently feminist".[3][4]

Socialist feminism connects the oppression of women to Marxist ideas about exploitation, oppression and labor. Socialist feminists think unequal standing in both the workplace and the domestic sphere holds women down.[5] Socialist feminists see prostitution, domestic work, childcare, and marriage as ways in which women are exploited by a patriarchal system that devalues women and the substantial work they do. Socialist feminists focus their energies on far-reaching change that affects society as a whole, rather than on an individual basis. They see the need to work alongside not just men but all other groups, as they see the oppression of women as a part of a larger pattern that affects everyone involved in the capitalist system.[6]

Marx felt that when class oppression was overcome gender oppression would vanish as well;[7] this is Marxist feminism. Some socialist feminists, many of Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party, point to the classic Marxist writings of Frederick Engels[8] and August Bebel[9] as a powerful explanation of the link between gender oppression and class exploitation. To some other socialist feminists, this view of gender oppression is naive and much of the work of socialist feminists has gone towards separating gender phenomena from class phenomena. Some contributors to socialist feminism have criticized these traditional Marxist ideas for being largely silent on gender oppression except to subsume it underneath broader class oppression.[10]

Radical feminism considers the male-controlled capitalist hierarchy, which it describes as sexist, as the defining feature of women's oppression. Radical feminists believe that women can free themselves only when they have done away with what they consider an inherently oppressive and dominating patriarchal system. Radical feminists feel that there is a male-based authority and power structure and that it is responsible for oppression and inequality, and that, as long as the system and its values are in place, society will not be able to be reformed in any significant way. Some radical feminists see no alternatives other than the total uprooting and reconstruction of society in order to achieve their goals.[16]

Cultural feminism is the ideology of a "female nature" or "female essence" that attempts to revalidate what they consider undervalued female attributes.[17] It emphasizes the difference between women and men but considers that difference to be psychological, and to be culturally constructed rather than biologically innate.[18] Its critics assert that, because it is based on an essentialist view of the differences between women and men and advocates independence and institution building, it has led feminists to retreat from politics to "life-style".[19] One such critic, Alice Echols (a feminist historian and cultural theorist), credits Redstockings member Brooke Williams with introducing the term cultural feminism in 1975 to describe the depoliticisation of radical feminism.[19]

Separatist feminism is a form of radical feminism that does not support heterosexual relationships. Lesbian feminism is thus closely related. Separatist feminism's proponents argue that the sexual disparities between men and women are unresolvable. Separatist feminists generally do not feel that men can make positive contributions to the feminist movement and that even well-intentioned men replicate patriarchal dynamics.[20] Author Marilyn Frye describes separatist feminism as "separation of various sorts or modes from men and from institutions, relationships, roles and activities that are male-defined, male-dominated, and operating for the benefit of males and the maintenance of male privilege—this separation being initiated or maintained, at will, by women".[21]

Black feminism argues that sexism, class oppression, and racism are inextricably bound together.[22] Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class oppression but ignore race can discriminate against many people, including women, through racial bias. The National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) was founded in 1973 by Florynce Kennedy, Margaret Sloan, and Doris Wright, and according to Wright it, “more than any other organization in the century launched a frontal assault on sexism and racism”. The NBFO also helped inspire the founding of the Boston based organization the Combahee River Collective in 1974 which not only led the way for crucial antiracist activism in Boston through the decade, but also provided a blueprint for Black feminism that still stands a quarter of a century later. Combahee member Barbara Smith’s definition of feminism that still remains a model today states that, “feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women, as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.”[23] The Combahee River Collective argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression.[24] One of the theories that evolved out of this movement was Alice Walker's womanism. It emerged after the early feminist movements that were led specifically by white women, were largely white middle-class movements, and had generally ignored oppression based on racism and classism. Alice Walker and other womanists pointed out that black women experienced a different and more intense kind of oppression from that of white women.[25]

Angela Davis was one of the first people who articulated an argument centered around the intersection of race, gender, and class in her book, Women, Race, and Class.[26]Kimberle Crenshaw, a prominent feminist law theorist, gave the idea the name Intersectionality while discussing identity politics in her essay, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color.

Chicana feminism focuses on Mexican American, Chicana, and Hispanic women in the United States. Hijas de Cuauhtemoc was one of the earliest Chicana feminist organizations in the Second Wave of feminism founded in 1971, and named after a Mexican women’s underground newspaper that was published during the 1910 Mexican revolution.[23] The Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional was founded in October 1970. The Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional is an organization of women who enhance and promote the image of Chicana/Latina women in all levels of society.[27]

The first wave of Asian women's organizing formed out of the Asian American movement of the 1960s, which in turn was inspired by the civil rights movement and the anti-Viet Nam War movement.[28] During the Second Wave of feminism, Asian American women provided services for battered women, worked as advocates for refugees and recent immigrants, produced events spotlighting Asian women’s cultural and political diversity, and organized with other women of color. Asian Sisters, which emerged in 1971 out of the Asian American Political Alliance, is an early Asian American women’s group based out of Los Angeles that focused on drug abuse intervention for young women. Networking between Asian American and other women during this period also included participation by a contingent of 150 Third World and white women from North America at the historic Vancouver Indochinese Women’s Conference (1971) to work with the Indochinese women against U.S. imperialism.[23]

Women of All Red Nations (WARN) was initiated in 1974, and is one of the best known Native American women’s organizations whose activism included fighting sterilization in public health service hospitals, suing the U.S. government for attempts to sell Pine Ridge water in South Dakota to corporations, and networking with indigenous people in Guatemala and Nicaragua.[23] WARN reflected a whole generation of Native American women activists who had been leaders in the takeover of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1973, on the Pine Ridge reservation (1973–76), and elsewhere.[23] WARN as well as other Native American women's organizations, grew out of—and often worked with—mixed-gender nationalist organizations.

Multiracial feminism (also known as "women of color" feminism) offers a standpoint theory and analysis of the lives and experiences of women of color.[29] The theory emerged in the 1990s and was developed by Dr. Maxine Baca Zinn, a Chicana feminist, and Dr. Bonnie Thornton Dill, a sociology expert on African American women and family.[29][30]

Though often ignored in the history of the Second Wave of feminism, Multiracial Feminists were organizing at the same time as white feminists. During the Second Wave of feminism stretching from the late 1960s /early 1970s until the 1990s Multiracial Feminists not only worked alongside other women of color and white feminists, but also organized themselves outside of women only spaces. In the 1970s women of color worked mainly on three fronts, “working with white dominated feminist groups; forming women’s caucuses in existing mixed-gender organizations; and forming autonomous Black, Latina, Native American, and Asian feminist organizations”[23] The perspective of Multiracial Feminism attempts to go beyond a mere recognition of diversity and difference among women, to examine structures of domination, specifically the importance of race in understanding the social construction of gender.[31]

Postcolonial feminism, sometimes also known as Third World feminism, partly draws on postcolonialism, which discusses experiences endured during colonialism, including "migration, slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, race, gender, place and responses to the influential discourses of imperial Europe."[32] Postcolonial feminism centers on racism, ethnic issues, and the long-lasting economic, political, and cultural effects of colonialism, inextricably bound up with the unique gendered realities of non-White non-Western women.[33] It sees the parallels between recently decolonized nations and the state of women within patriarchy—both postcolonialism and postcolonial feminism take the "perspective of a socially marginalized subgroup in their relationship to the dominant culture."[32]

Colonialism has a gendered history. Colonial powers often imposed Western norms on colonized regions. Postcolonial feminists argue that cultures impacted by colonialism are often vastly different and should be treated as such. In the 1940s and '50s, after the formation of the United Nations, former colonies were monitored by the West for what was considered "social progress". Since then, the status of women in the developing world has been monitored by organizations such as the United Nations. Traditional practices and roles taken up by women—sometimes seen as distasteful by Western standards—could be considered a form of rebellion against colonial oppression.[39] That oppression may result in the glorification of pre-colonial culture, which, in cultures with traditions of power stratification along gender lines, could mean the acceptance of, or refusal to deal with, issues of gender inequality.[40] Postcolonial feminists today struggle to fight gender oppression within their own cultural models of society rather than through those imposed by the Western colonizers.[41]

Postcolonial feminism is closely related to transnational feminism. The former has strong overlaps and ties with Black feminism because both respond to racism and seek recognition by men in their own cultures and by Western feminists.[33]

Third-world feminism has been described as a group of feminist theories developed by feminists who acquired their views and took part in feminist politics in so-called third-world countries.[42] Although women from the third world have been engaged in the feminist movement, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Sarojini Sahoo criticize Western feminism on the grounds that it is ethnocentric and does not take into account the unique experiences of women from third-world countries or the existence of feminisms indigenous to third-world countries. According to Mohanty, women in the third world feel that Western feminism bases its understanding of women on "internal racism, classism and homophobia".[35] This discourse is strongly related to African feminism and postcolonial feminism. Its development is also associated with black feminism, womanism,[25][43][44] "Africana womanism",[45] "motherism",[46] "Stiwanism",[47] "negofeminism",[48]chicana feminism, and "femalism".

There are several categories under the theory of libertarian feminism, or kinds of feminism that are linked to libertarian ideologies. Anarcha-feminism combines feminist and anarchist beliefs, embodying classical libertarianism rather than contemporary minarchist libertarianism. Recently, Wendy McElroy has defined a position, which she labels "ifeminism" or "individualist feminism", that combines feminism with anarcho-capitalism or contemporary minarchist libertarianism, and she argued that a pro-capitalist and anti-state position is compatible with an emphasis on equal rights and empowerment for women.[56] Individualist anarchist-feminism has grown from the United States-based individualist anarchism movement.[57]

Individualist feminism is typically defined as a feminism in opposition to what writers such as Wendy McElroy and Christina Hoff Sommers term political or gender feminism.[58][59][60] However, there are some differences within the discussion of individualist feminism. While some individualist feminists like McElroy oppose government interference into the choices women make with their bodies because such interference creates a coercive hierarchy (such as patriarchy),[61][62] other feminists such as Christina Hoff Sommers hold that feminism's political role is simply to ensure that everyone's, including women's, right against coercive interference is respected.[55] Sommers is described as a "socially conservative equity feminist" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[55] Critics have called her an anti-feminist.[63][64]

New Age feminism has emerged in the 21st century as both a continuation and response to Second and Third Wave feminism. It challenges "traditional definitions of femininity and embraces a change in times, incorporating elements of ethnicity, girl power, individualist feminism, sex-positivity and postmodernism."[65] In New Age feminism, a woman (or man) embraces the qualities in him or herself that have culturally been defined as “feminine” without shame, while still fighting against the discrimination women (and “feminine” men) still face in the workplace and other facets of 21st century society. This movement comes in response to a culture that "simultaneously claims to embrace the equality of men and women and at the same time seriously devalues femininity".[66]

Unlike Second and Third wave feminists, a New Age feminist does not demand women be treated the same way as a man, but rather that the differences between men and women be recognized, understood, and accommodated even while those differences are treated with equity.

For this reason she does not deny her female biology (whether physical, hormonal, or psychological), and demands it be accommodated for while still not allowing it to justify oppression. She supports scientific studies into the biologically influenced differences between those with male and female bodies and accepts that traits culturally defined as “feminine” like being moody, emotionally articulate, gentle, or quiet, are “rooted in biology, not intended to mesh with any kind of pro- or anti-feminist ideology.”[67]

New Age feminists are not afraid to have children or to get married should they choose to, nor do they feel shame for choosing not to. A New Age feminist knows there is great joy in both a career and a family, and feels entitled to both. This feminist is not looking for special treatment, or even purely equal treatment. She is looking for equitable treatment, respect in the workplace, and equal opportunity. She champions the rights of working women to become pregnant, take maternity leave, and nurse in public, while still getting paid as much as her male counterparts. Meanwhile she lends her support to slut walks,[68] sex workers, belly[69] and poll dancers, #FreeTheNipple[70] campaigns, as well as anti-harassment and anti-victim blaming movements. She denounces sexual exploitation, but also believes in a woman (or man’s) right to explore and be empowered by his or her own "feminine" sexuality.

New Age feminists do not hate men. In fact, many of them may have at some point in their lives identified as ‘men,’ or, are in love with or have close relationships with men. Nor do they reject certain male practices like chivalry and sexual dominance as long as they are performed consensually.

Post-structural feminism, also referred to as French feminism, uses the insights of various epistemological movements, including psychoanalysis, linguistics, political theory (Marxist and post-Marxist theory), race theory, literary theory, and other intellectual currents for feminist concerns.[73] Many post-structural feminists maintain that difference is one of the most powerful tools that women possess in their struggle with patriarchal domination, and that to equate the feminist movement only with equality is to deny women a plethora of options because equality is still defined from the masculine or patriarchal perspective.[73][74]

In A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway criticizes traditional notions of feminism, particularly its emphasis on identity, rather than affinity. She uses the metaphor of a cyborg in order to construct a postmodern feminism that moves beyond dualisms and the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics.[75] Haraway's cyborg is an attempt to break away from Oedipal narratives and Christian origin myths like Genesis. She writes, "The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust."[75]

A major branch in postmodern feminist thought has emerged from contemporary psychoanalytic French feminism. Other postmodern feminist works highlight stereotypical gender roles, only to portray them as parodies of the original beliefs. The history of feminism is not important in these writings—only what is going to be done about it. The history is dismissed and used to depict how ridiculous past beliefs were. Modern feminist theory has been extensively criticized as being predominantly, though not exclusively, associated with Western middle class academia. Mary Joe Frug, a postmodernist feminist, criticized mainstream feminism as being too narrowly focused and inattentive to related issues of race and class.[76]

French feminism is a branch of feminist thought from a group of feminists in France from the 1970s to the 1990s. It is distinguished from Anglophone feminism by an approach which is more philosophical and literary. Its writings tend to be effusive and metaphorical, being less concerned with political doctrine and generally focused on theories of "the body."[77] The term includes writers who are not French, but who have worked substantially in France and the French tradition,[78] such as Julia Kristeva and Bracha Ettinger.

In the 1970s, French feminists approached feminism with the concept of Écriture féminine, which translates as 'feminine writing'.[79]Hélène Cixous argues that writing and philosophy are phallocentric and along with other French feminists such as Luce Irigaray emphasizes "writing from the body" as a subversive exercise.[79] The work of the feminist psychoanalyst and philosopher, Julia Kristeva, has influenced feminist theory in general and feminist literary criticism in particular. From the 1980s onwards, the work of artist and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger has influenced literary criticism, art history, and film theory.[80][81] However, as the scholar Elizabeth Wright pointed out, "none of these French feminists align themselves with the feminist movement as it appeared in the Anglophone world."[79][82]

Ecofeminism links ecology with feminism. Ecofeminists see the domination of women as stemming from the same ideologies that bring about the domination of the environment. Western patriarchal systems, where men own and control the land, are seen as responsible for the oppression of women and destruction of the natural environment. Ecofeminists argue that the men in power control the land, and therefore are able to exploit it for their own profit and success. In this situation, Ecofeminists consider women to be exploited by men in power for their own profit, success, and pleasure. Thus Ecofeminists argue that women and the environment are both exploited as passive pawns in the race to domination. Ecofeminists argue that those people in power are able to take advantage of them distinctly because they are seen as passive and rather helpless.[83]

Ecofeminism connects the exploitation and domination of women with that of the environment. As a way of repairing social and ecological injustices, ecofeminists feel that women must work towards creating a healthy environment and ending the destruction of the lands that most women rely on to provide for their families.[83]

Ecofeminism argues that there is a connection between women and nature that comes from their shared history of oppression by a patriarchal Western society. Vandana Shiva claims that women have a special connection to the environment through their daily interactions with it that has been ignored. She says that "women in subsistence economies, producing and reproducing wealth in partnership with nature, have been experts in their own right of holistic and ecological knowledge of nature's processes. But these alternative modes of knowing, which are oriented to the social benefits and sustenance needs are not recognized by the capitalistreductionist paradigm, because it fails to perceive the interconnectedness of nature, or the connection of women's lives, work and knowledge with the creation of wealth."[84]

However, feminist and social ecologistJanet Biehl has criticized ecofeminism for focusing too much on a mystical connection between women and nature and not enough on the actual conditions of women.[85]

Transfeminism (or trans feminism) is, as defined by Robert Hill, "a category of feminism, most often known for the application of transgender discourses to feminist discourses, and of feminist beliefs to transgender discourse".[86] Hill says that transfeminism also concerns its integration within mainstream feminism.[87] He defines transfeminism in this context as a type of feminism "having specific content that applies to transgender and transsexual people, but the thinking and theory of which is also applicable to all women".[citation needed]

Transfeminism includes many of the major themes of other third-wave feminism, including diversity, body image, oppression, misogyny, and women's agency. It is not merely about merging trans concerns with feminism, but often applies feminist analysis and critiques to social issues facing trans women and trans people more broadly.[citation needed] Transfeminism also includes critical analysis of second-wave feminism from the perspective of the third wave.[88]

Movements share some perspectives while disagreeing on others. For example, some movements differ on whether discrimination against women adversely affects men. Movements represented by writers Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem consider men oppressed by gender roles. "From the beginning Friedan had presented feminism as a sex-role revolution in which both men and women would benefit. Indeed, for Friedan feminism was but 'a stage in the whole human rights movement.'"[93] "[I]n 1970, Gloria Steinem, Ms. editor and the best-known exponent of this new liberal feminism . . . implied that women's liberation was men's liberation as well" because some burdens on men would no longer be men's alone.[94]Susan Faludi wrote, in Stiffed, "[W]ith the mystery of men's nonrebellion comes the glimmer of an opening, an opportunity for men to forge a rebellion commensurate with women's and, in the course of it, to create a new paradigm for human progress that will open doors for both sexes. That was, and continues to be, feminism's dream, to create a freer, more humane world."[95]Ellen Willis, weighing economics and feminism, considered an alliance with men necessary to women's liberation.[96]Florynce Kennedy wrote, "Men are outraged, turned off, and wigged out, by threats that women might withdraw consent to oppression, because they—men—subconsciously (and often consciously) know that they—men—are oppressed."[97]Mary Wollstonecraft wrote, "From the respect paid to property flow . . . most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind. . . . One class presses on another; for all are aiming to procure respect on account of their property . . . . [M]en wonder that the world is almost, literally speaking, a den of sharpers or oppressors."[98] "Those writers are particularly useful, in my opinion, who make man feel for man, independent of the station he fills, or the drapery of factitious sentiments."[99] "Men are not aware of the misery they cause, and the vicious weakness they cherish, by only inciting women to render themselves pleasing".[100] "To say the truth, I not only tremble for the souls of women, but for the good natured man, whom everyone loves."[101]

Other movements consider men primarily the causative agents of sexism. Mary Daly wrote, "The courage to be logical—the courage to name—would require that we admit to ourselves that males and males only are the originators, planners, controllers, and legitimators of patriarchy. Patriarchy is the homeland of males; it is Father Land; and men are its agents."[102]The Redstockings declared, "We identify the agents of our oppression as men. . . . [M]en dominate women, a few men dominate the rest. . . . All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women."[103] In a somewhat less clear-cut position, Kate Millett wrote in Sexual Politics, "The following sketch . . . . must . . . be both tentative and imperfect. . . . [O]ur society, like all other historical civilizations, is a patriarchy. . . . The fact is evident at once if one recalls that . . . every avenue of power within the society . . . is entirely in male hands. . . . If one takes patriarchal government to be the institution whereby that half of the populace which is female is controlled by that half which is male, the principles of patriarchy appear to be two fold: male shall dominate female, elder male shall dominate younger. However, just as with any human institution, . . . contradictions and exceptions do exist within the system."[104]

According to Linda Zerilli and Donna Haraway, "'taxonomies' of feminism ... can create artificial dichotomies between feminist discourses that seriously impede constructive political debates about subjectivity for women."[105]

^Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in ed. Deidre Shauna Lynch, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Contexts Criticism (N.Y.: W.W. Norton (Norton Critical Ed. ser.), pbk. [1st printing?] 2009 (ISBN 978-0-393-92974-4)), pp. 148–149 (§ The Text of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects; in Vindication, ch. IX, Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society) (title per id., p. [iii]; title A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Mary Wollstonecraft, per id., cover I; subsubtitle not punctuated in original) (ed. prof. & assoc. prof. Eng., Univ. of Toronto, id., p. [i] (The Editor)).